I read a story this morning about two women from the same family who found out on the same day that they were both pregnant with their first children. One of them was a young woman, I'm guessing 20-ish, while the other was much older, I believe in her 60's.
The older woman and her husband had wanted a child for many years. They had tried and tried with no luck. They had even prayed about it more times than they could remember, asking God to bless them with a child of their own. They had seen many other family members grow up, get married, and raise families while they seemed to be cursed in this area. It broke both of their hearts for a very long time, and they couldn't understand why they weren't allowed to experience the same joy they had seen countless others experience.
The younger woman was taken by surprise for a very different reason. She was engaged at the time, but wasn't yet married. She and her fiance' hadn't had any time at all to plan for a child, nor were they prepared for the news when it came.
The younger woman went to visit her older relative once she had heard the news, and the families stayed together for a few months. As they talked more and more about their pregnancies and the children who would be given to them, their excitement grew exponentially. They both agreed that they had been truly blessed by God.
The delivery date came, and both women gave birth to healthy baby boys. Those babies grew up to be outstanding men, both of whom reached adulthood basing their entire lives upon their faith. They never looked to do anyone harm. In fact, they were faithful, honest, trustworthy men who shared an intense drive to always do what was right, to speak the truth, and to always help others when they were truly needed.
The story takes a bit of an alarming turn, because when they were in their early 30's, both men were brutally murdered, just a couple years apart, by people who had falsely accused them of wrongdoing.
The younger mother was actually forced to watch the murder of her son, but was unable to stop it from happening.
As the younger woman was asked later for her view on where the events of where her life had taken her, she said that she had been truly blessed. While I'm quite certain that her human side longed for simpler days when she could hold her son in her arms, she had absolute faith in God's plan for her life in this world, as well as in the world to come. The older woman also agreed about the events of her own life.
Who were these two women, and where does that kind of faith come from?
The younger woman was Mary, the mother of Jesus. The older was Elizabeth, the mother of John the Baptist, who was beheaded for offending Herod's wife by speaking the truth. The story begins in Luke Chapter 1.
So where does this kind of faith come from, that a mother could witness the brutal murder of her son, and while her heart broke in ways we could never imagine, she was still able to cling to her faith that God was in control? Did she love her son any less than other mothers have? Was she somehow damaged inside, disconnected, mean, or uncaring? No. So where does that kind of faith come from?
It comes from 2 words.......Eternal perspective. It comes from the knowledge and wisdom in understanding that all that we have belongs to God. We are blessed with these things, whatever they are, while we are here on earth. But everything we see was given to us by God, will be used by God to fulfill His purposes, and can be taken away by God at any given moment. It doesn't matter what it is. Our health, our homes, our cars, our clothing, our food, our families, our money, our gifts, talents and abilities, it all belongs to God.
We sometimes look around at what we've been blessed with, and we feel as though we've earned it, it's ours, and nobody can take it away. While it's fine to be proud of our accomplishments, that's a very earthly perspective. It's a perspective that will cause us to become angry or bitter with God if He indeed takes those things away. It's a perspective that will eventually cause us to make little idols of those things, spending all of our days in an effort to keep, protect, or maintain them. And if we were to lose them, we would feel as though we had lost everything.
But what if we gave them to God now, while we still have them? What if we asked Him to show us how He would ask us to use them for His glory? What if we readily admitted that all of it belongs to Him, so while we have these things we will be incredibly thankful for all of them, knowing that He could take all of them away tomorrow?
I'll tell you where that would lead. It would lead to a life of incredible peace and contentment, no matter what our circumstances may be. I'm not talking about a fatalistic view of life, where we shouldn't get too excited about anything because in the end, we're probably going to lose it anyway. I'm talking about the freedom to enjoy those things with all of our hearts because we see all of them as beautiful gifts from God Himself.
There are literally thousands of self-help books on the bookstore shelves these days that try to direct us to a happy, peaceful, joyous life in the midst of the mayhem and chaos. How ironic that the answer has been right in front of us throughout all time.
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